How does having a part-time job affect student academic performance?

 
TeAch-nology.com's Teacher Poll of the Week
How does having a part-time job affect student academic performance?
Hurts academic performance 61.4%
Improves academic performance 22.3%
Does not affect academic performance 16.3%

Total Votes: 1824


 
 
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The majority of teachers feel that having a part-time job affects student academic performance. This response accounted for over half of the votes in this poll. However, the most interesting fact is that more teachers felt that a part-time job improved performance than those who felt it had no affect at all.

The most obvious answer to the poll question, and the one that seems the most likely, is that academic performance is affected. This makes sense because when a student gets a job, they have less time to devote to their academic studies. Less study time usually means a decrease in test scores and overall grades. Students get jobs for many reasons including wanting to buy a car or to earn money for social outings. Unfortunately, many students need to get part-time jobs to help support their families and in those cases there are few options available to them.

For the percentage of teachers who feel that working improves a student's academic performance it would be interesting to hear what the theories are for this. Perhaps once a student becomes responsible enough to hold down a job, they transfer this new attitude towards their studies. Maybe the improvement is coincidental. When students reach the age of being able to obtain work, perhaps they would naturally have paid more attention to their studies. Maybe it is a natural part of the maturing process.

The number of teachers who feel that working has no affect at all is less than 20%. Some students are naturally bright and spend very little time studying so the hours they spend working has little or no affect. These students are in the minority so it would make sense that this category received the fewest votes in this poll.

Whether working affects student performance or not is not likely to have an effect on the number of students getting jobs. Cars, clothes, or family necessity will lead most teenagers to get hired at some point. We can only hope they have some time left over to attend to their studies.